The 17th daily record for Antarctic Sea Ice Extent in 2014 was set yesterday on Feb 3 (Day 34).

The old record was broken by 290,000 sq km. Sea Ice is 980,000 sq km above the 1981-2010 mean. Thats 28.65%.

And WOW …. I know this is probably just an aberration (but it isn’t a normal time so who knows) but extent only fell 3230 sq km from day 33 to 34. Normally at this time of year extent falls around 40,000-100,000 sq km per day.

Caveat: the raw data has 0.00058 sq km in the missing column (which is usually 0). Not sure what that means, but that is only 580 sq km.

I’ve added the 2008 Highest Minimum point to this graph. Data is here. Click for bigger.